Mark Wegierski, a previous contributor, is a Toronto-based writer, historian and permanent associate of the Canadian-Polish Research Institute. Toward Green Conservatism A Book Review by Mark Wegierski

BEYOND THE NEW RIGHT: positive agenda" (pp. 1-45) while the libertarian MARKETS, GOVERNMENT AND minimal state is criticized, some of the solutions THE COMMON ENVIRONMENT offered seem distinctly libertarian: the possible By John Gray privatization of the provision of money-supply (as London and New York: Routledge suggested by Hayek); the elimination of taxes on 195 pages, $34.50 corporations; and the lowering of taxation to a flat tax John Gray, a professor at Jesus College, Oxford, of 15 percent, plus a comprehensive VAT of 15 has long been identified with the conventional, pro- percent. In "A Conservative Disposition: capitalist, Anglo-American rightwing — for example, Individualism, the Free Market and the Common Life" by being a regular contributor to National Review, and (pp. 46-65), unrestricted free-market dogma is to various free-market think-tanks in Britain. In this trenchantly attacked. In "The Moral Foundations of book, particularly in its last section, "An agenda for Market Institutions" (p. 66-123) stress is put on the Green conservatism", he breaks decisively with the moral and social context that makes the market heritage of Hayek, Nozick, and ultimately, Adam possible, implying the necessity of a truly "enabling Smith and Locke. (Despite their comparative earliness, welfare state" (as opposed to the welfare state in its Locke's writings imply, according to theorists like contemporary incarnations). The "social market Fukuyama, "accumulation without end.") This book is economy" enunciated by the post-World War II the capstone of a systematic examination and critique Freiburg School in West Germany is seen as a possible of the various forms of liberal political theory (which positive model — while libertarianism, egalitarianism, extend from the right-wing liberalism or libertarianism market socialism, and the socialist command-economy of Nozick to the Left-liberalism of Rawls, Ronald are rejected. Dworkin and their successors), begun with Liberalisms (1989) and Post-Liberalism (1993). It is "The necessity of a one of those rare books that is intensely scholarly while also engaging forthrightly and directly with worldwide immigration and some critical aspects of the period of late modernity in population control policy which we live. is stressed." The "New Right" under examination in this book is neither the populist American New Right of Richard Viguerie, nor the eclectic, anticapitalist and cultural However, it is the fourth section (pp. 124-177) European New Right of Alain de Benoist, but rather that is certainly revolutionary. It attempts to identify a the neo-liberal (i.e. neo-capitalist), classical liberal, possible convergence of truly conservative and truly libertarian, and neoconservative tendency that rose to ecological thought: prominence in Britain and America under the auspices Green theory is an invaluable corrective of the of Thatcher and Reagan, centered on the exaltation of Whiggish, anthropocentric, technological the market, market-solutions, and unlimited economic optimism by which all the modernist political growth as the panacea for the deep-rooted crises of religions are animated and which has, in the these societies. form of neo-liberalism, even infected most of The book is divided into an introduction, four what passes today as conservatism (p. 177). long essays, notes, and an index. It has generated a fair amount of commentary, including a review in The My argument has been that there are many Economist (August 14, 1993, p. 87), and a cover- natural affinities between conservative article in National Review, "Growth Without End, philosophy and Green thought...Conservatives Amen?" by Fred Charles Iklé (March 7, 1994, pp. 36- must learn from Green thought that the promise 44), which echoed its central arguments, and explicitly of open-ended global growth...is delusive; referred to the book in support of them. instead they must turn their attention to the The concluding essay stands at some variance sources of legitimacy by which social with the preceeding three, which had been published institutions could be sustained in a stationary- earlier in other fora. In "Limited government: a state economy. In repudiating...neo-liberalism, conservatives are merely returning to an older

The Social Contract 299 Summer 1994 and sounder Tory tradition, which perceived aspects of a future he would seek to avoid. He the illusoriness of the sovereign, autonomous frequently refers to the collapse of American urban chooser of liberal theory, and so insisted on the life. He makes the particularly cutting observation: primacy of the common life. The importance of …the decline of the United States into a sort of Green thought for conservatives today is that it chronic, low-intensity ethnic civil war, a proto- recalls them to their historic task of giving Lebanon held together only by a dwindling shelter to communities and reproducing them capital of legalism, called into question the across the generations - in a context of finite Enlightenment project of citizenship grounded resources which dictates stability, not growth, in universal principles and excluding the as the pre-eminent conservative value (p. 173). contingencies of historical identity (p. ix). The "stationary-state" is advocated as an Gray's essential argument is for a regrounding of alternative to the ceaseless inflammation of the desire human social experience in history and Nature. If we for perpetual economic growth. John Stuart Mill's want to live in an even minimally civilized society, passages in support of a stationary-state economy are there will simply be no room in the future for growth quoted (pp. 140-142) — an inspired piece of without end and ever-more-expansive rights-doctrines. scholarship, citing the well-known epigone to contrary His book can be taken as a salutary warning for the ends. The necessity of a worldwide immigration and soft denizens of today's socially and culturally population control policy is stressed. In energy policy, disintegrating — and ecologically destructive — Gray argues for a rejection of the nuclear taboo America and West.  common among Greens, while in agriculture he points out the destructive processes of "agricultural industry" as probably one of the greatest threats to the biosphere. He very sensibly argues for policies that would enhance and preserve the patterns of traditional rural agriculture in the Third World, rejecting a model that tries to mimic the processes of Western industrialization. In urban and transport policy areas, Gray inveighs against the car, calling for transport alternatives. He also calls for very strong planning controls in urban centres, that will try to keep these places liveable. Gray also cites the remarkable and surprisingly tough-minded Green theorist (who, for example, does not unqualifiedly oppose nuclear power) James Lovelock (The Ages of Gaia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 212), in a passage which is a fitting riposte to some of those squishy-soft hippie Greens: Gaia, as I see her, is no doting mother, tolerant of misdemeanours, nor is she some fragile and delicate damsel in danger from brutal mankind. She is stern and tough, always keeping the world warm and comfortable for those who obey the rules, but ruthless in her destruction of those who transgress. Her unconscious goal is a planet fit for life. If humans stand in the way of this, we shall be eliminated with as little pity as would be shown by the micro-brain of an intercontinental ballistic missile in full flight to its target (p. 173). Gray argues it would be far preferable to take the strong, necessarily authoritarian measures to curb humanity's population growth and hypertrophic consumption before the homeostatic defenses of the natural world actually kick in. Throughout the book, Gray is particularly critical of the United States as embodying all the worst

The Social Contract 300 Summer 1994